Slinko Goes to the Coast

 

Slinko with shoulder stitches

I got an appointment at the coast clinic for Slinko two months ago.

I'd had my appointments in the spring at the coast clinic cancelled as they attempted to adjust to Covid criteria.  So when Slinko developed a strange and ugly cyst on his shoulder this fall, I called for an appointment and that appointment was yesterday.

He also had this upper canine, just the one left, that was hanging down farther and farther.  I had thought it would just slide out on its own but it hadn't and even touching his face on that side produced grimaces from him.

So I scheduled him for a dental and the shoulder cycst, removal if necessary.  In the meantime, I soaked that cyst with warm cloths with epsom salts.  One day I was petting him and felt warm fluid and part of that cyst drained out.  But it wasn't pus, it was kind of sludgy looking blood.  Anyhow, then I didn't worry so much about it, figuring it was some kind of hematoma.  It looked however like a wart grown on top of a wart, grown on top of a wart.   Ugly!  And was very hard by yesterday.  He didn't like it touched, but would scratch at it.

I got going on time at 4:30 a.m. after going to bed very early.  The drive to the clinic was uncommonly busy with traffic for that early.  Usually as I head west out of Portland traffic vanishes at that hour.  Not yesterday.   The weather was clear and cold, but with cold weather comes dense fog in the mountains, in spots.   

Their Covid protocol means no lines inside the clinic waiting to check in.  Instead, you call a couple of numbers posted on their door until you get an answer, then they have you bring your cat to the clinic door and knock, hand them in, and they hand you the surgery papers to fill out. When you've filled out the papers, you knock again, and they take the papers.  So it didn't take that long. 

After that, I got a breakfast sandwich and headed to the beach to eat it, to my favorite jetty parking lot.  However, the reconstruction of the south jetty, at the confluence of the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean, is still going on, with half the parking lot now blocked off for construction traffic and trailers and the trail out to the beach closed.   So I left there and finally went to the beach at the Peter Iredale shipwreck.   There was only one car there.  The tide was in, but going out.  And I was sleepy.  I had my sleeping bag in my car, and crawled into the bag, laid out and slept a couple hours.  The weather was clear but windy.

There's not a lot left of the Iredale shipwreck.

When I woke up, there were all sorts of people and cars there, even cars driving on the beach, since now the tide was out far enough and that drives me a little nuts, to see cars driving around on a beach of all places.   In fact, I get disgusted with cars on the beach.  There is so much traffic everywhere, with traffic jams and car wrecks, can't we have a few places where cars don't go?  I also think beach drivers are extremely lazy people.   Get out of your car, for gosh sakes, walk a few feet.

I went to another parking lot and slept some more.  It's quite difficult in many places to find public restrooms and the coast is no exception.  This problem is much worse since Covid hit.  I need a pop out bathroom for my car.  So Walmart has public restrooms and that's the parking lot I sat and slept in next, so I had a bathroom nearby.  The alternative is to eat and drink nothing all day, so that's not an issue.

I'd forgotten my book and the sitting made me stiff.  I finally got out and took a couple walking laps around the parking lot.  And finally picked up Slinko a little early and headed home.  He now has no hanging fang and an inch and a half line of stitches across his shoulder, where they removed the cyst.  They did not send it off for biopsy, judging it benign and that unneeded.  I was overwhelmed with gratitude for this clinic.  I've always liked them for their affordable pricing and no bullshit ways.

I cut off of highway 26 before hitting Portland, fearful of terrible congestion on Christmas Eve's eve.  I headed south to Forest Grove and from there south to McMinnville and home on 99W, then cutting off that to Albany.  I spent no more time on the road this way, going home, than I had going through Portland early morning on the way to the clinic.  Usually on the way home, I encounter at least an hour to two hours of bumper to bumper stop and go congestion through Portland because I am coming home during rush hours.

I'll get a photo of Slinko's shoulder when he wakes up.  He was so happy to be home last night he wanted on my lap last night.   I watched a netflix movie, with Slinko atop me, called Midnight Sky and it made me cry, as it was a lonely movie but also very beautiful.  

Here's a Slinko photo from before his road trip yesterday.  This is from May 2019.